More Strength And Better Physical Function Could Reduce Hospitalization Risk In Older Adults

According to the finding of a new study in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society, elderly people with less strength, poor physical function and low muscle density are at more risk of being hospitalized than people with more strength and better physical function.

Study found that rather than muscle mass or size, muscle density is the accurate gauze of a person’s risk of hospitalization. Muscle density is a measure of how much fat compared to lean tissue there is in the muscle.

Elderly people with poor walking and less dense muscle mass have 50 percent higher risk for hospitalizations.

“Our research suggests that we need to re-think the way we define sarcopenia or age-related muscle loss,” says Peggy Cawthon, PhD, MPH, a scientist with the California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute and the lead author of the study.